_{The Social Justice Institute}
Noted Scholars Series presents:

Dr. Vernadette Gonzalez
Professor of American Studies and Director of the Honors Program at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

&

Dr. Hōkūlani K. Aikau (Kanaka ‘Ōiwi)
Professor at the University of Victoria in the Indigenous Governance Program

“Curating Detours: a Decolonial Guide to Hawaiʻi”

WHEN & WHERE
December 1st
Zoom

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^{All events are free and open to the public.}

Prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic, tourists visiting Hawai‘i vastly outnumbered local residents by more than 9.4 million to 1.4 million. The fourth smallest “state,” Hawai‘i ranks tenth in visitors. Tourism, along with militarism, is the core of Hawai‘i’s economic engine, cementing tourist desire and satisfaction as the definitive concerns that shape the “health” of Hawaiʻi. Given how Hawaiʻi is overdetermined by tourism, how might we offer a decolonial encounter with Hawai‘i as something worth understanding and engaging in?  Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawaiʻi takes seriously the power of form and the reading practices, imaginaries and publics produced by tourism and deliberately unsettles them. Our presentation will outline the ethical dimensions of the project and the rationale for turning away from the guidebook genre toward a book that guides readers to decolonisation—a template and archive of place-based work and representations aimed at achieving ea (life, breath, sovereignty). We will also reflect on the kinds of responsibilities that emerge from this framework and what it means for people who visit or live in Hawaiʻi and for decolonzation in other places.

Vernadette Gonzalez is Professor of American Studies and Director of the Honors Program at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Her areas of research include studies of tourism and militarism, transnational cultural studies, feminist theory, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies with a focus on Asia and the Pacific. She has a PhD in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality.

Hōkūlani K. Aikau (Kanaka ‘Ōiwi) is a professor at the University of Victoria in the Indigenous Governance Program. She is the author of A Chosen People, A Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawaiʻi (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). With Vernadette V. Gonzalez, she coedited Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawaiʻi (2019) and edits the Detours Series with Duke University Press.